If anyone has the specifics on this item, I'd really appreciate knowing them.
How To Use This Site
How To Use This Site
This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.
The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.
You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date. Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.
We hope you enjoy this site.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
October 22
If anyone has the specifics on this item, I'd really appreciate knowing them.
Monday, September 16, 2013
September 16
set sail for the New World.
It was at sea for ten weeks, putting in near Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.
September 16, 1920. The Wall Street Bombing.
On this day, at 12:01 p.m., terrorist widely believed to be Galleanist anarchists, set off a bomb in New York's Wall Street district which killed thirty-eight people and injured hundreds more.
The bomb, designed to deploy shrapnel, killed mostly young workers in the district at a time at which young workers were very young. It was left in a horse drawn wagon, with horse still attached, and went off at the busy noon hour.
The direct perpetrators of the act were never discovered.
Today In Wyoming's History: September 16, 1940. Conscription starts and the National Guard mobilized.
Today In Wyoming's History: September 16: 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.
Friday, September 13, 2013
September 13
1942 Responding to calls from the commander of the Army Air Corps' Casper Air Base commander, city officials took steps to close the Sandbar, Casper's infamous red light district. Almost remembered in a nostalgic, semi charming, manner today, the Sandbar had been a concentration of vice for Natrona County since the 1920s where criminal activity was openly conducted. In spite of the World War Two effort, the Sandbar remained a center for the conduct of vice until the 1970s, at which point it was attacked by an urban renewal project that effectively destroyed its infrastructure.
2019 The University of Wyoming issued a formal apology to the Black 14, those University of Wyoming football players dismissed from the football team in 1969 by Coach Eaton for wanting to discuss wearing black armbands in protest at an upcoming game.
Sunday, August 25, 2013
August 25
1850 Western humorist Edgar Wilson "Bill" Nye born in Maine. He career as a humorist was launched while he was a postmaster in Laramie.
1916. National Park Service formed. The NPS took over a role which had been occupied by the Army, that of patrolling the National Parks. Their uniform still recalls the Army of 1916 to a small extent, in that they've retained the M1911 style campaign hat, in straw and felt, as part of their uniform.
On this, it's also the case here that the Yellowstone just ceased last year using the Army built courthouse, built in 1908, in favor of a newly constructed one. Still, that's pretty good service for a small Army courthouse really.
In 1916, the cavalry branch, which had been heavily involved in patrolling the parks, was committed to the Cold/Lukewarm war with Villa. I wonder if part of the reason that the Park Service came into being in 1916 was because this mounted service was needed to free up the Army's mounted arm for it's primary military role?
1944 Seventeen sheep were slain by a mystery aircraft near Medicine Bow. I wish I knew more details about this, but I don't. The item is a Wyoming State Historical Society item, and must have been reported in a newspaper at the time.
1950 President Harry S. Truman orders the Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
1972 Congress authorized the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.
2010 Governor Dave Freudenthal signed an executive order increasing protected sage grouse habitat by a net of 400,000 acres.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
August 18
Douglas has a nice park dedicated to railroad today.
Douglas Wyoming railroad sites
These are scenes from Douglas Wyoming, which is the location of a Railroad Interpretive Center. The old Great Northwestern depot serves as its headquarters, as well as the chamber of commerce's headquarters.
2015 Casper's city counsel votes to allow chickens to be kept in the city, by a vote of seven to one.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
August 6
1846 DeForest Richards, Governor from 1899-1903, born in Wilcox County, Alabama. Attribution: On This Day.
1850 Louis Vasquez becomes the Postmaster at Ft. Bridger.
1867 Indians raided Union Pacific near the present location of Lexington Nebraska.
1890 Cy Young made his major league debut with the Cleveland Spiders of the National League.
1898 The Wyoming Battalion left the steamer Ohio in Manila Bay and went into camp at Paranaque.Attribution: On This Day.
1910 Crystal Lake Dam completed. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
1916 Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages. Previewed on this day.
The film Intolerance was previewed in Riverside California on this day in 1916. Regarded as a masterpiece of this era, the film is a series of vignettes involving a poor young woman separated by prejudice from her husband and baby and site between stories of intolerance from throughout history. It was a reaction, in part, to the negative reaction to the racists Birth of a Nation by the same director. Like a lot of silent movies, it was long, running 3:17.
1916 The Sunday State Leader for August 6, 1916. Laramie steps up to the plate with Guard recruits.
Cheyenne's Sunday State Leader was reporting that neighboring Albany County had come in with Guardsmen to help fill out the state's National Guard.
And the GOP comments on Wilson's policy on Mexico wasn't being well received everywhere.
And labor was unhappy in New York.
1945 The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the first use of such a weapon, and of course one of only two such uses.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
Friday, July 19, 2013
July 19
1864 The USS Wyoming returned to a U.S. port after extended service in the Far East, which she would soon see again.
1867. The Army commences construction of Ft. Fetterman. The fort is located on a windy bluff overlooking the Platte River. The site requires those detailed to walk some distance to water, and for a period of time the post would have the highest insanity rate in the Army.
1877 .Union Pacific employees wrote Yale paleontologist William Carlin about the discovery of fossils at Como Bluff. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
1885 Owen Wister takes his legendary snooze on the counter of the general store at Medicine Bow, while waiting for a train. The Philadelphia born Wister, was very well educated and had hoped for a career in music, but instead obtained a law degree from Harvard due to the urging of his father. He practiced law in Philadelphia. During that period he commenced vacationing in the West, with his first trip to Wyoming being this one, in 1885. It would lead to his legendary book, The Virginian. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
1890 Laramie granted a franchise for a street railway. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
1907 Isabel Jewell born in Shoshoni. Jewell was a successful Broadway and screen actress in the 1930s and 1940s.
1918 The headline says it all. Laramie Boomerang, July 19, 1918.
1922 Cheyenne's mayor banned the sale of firearms during a railroad strike. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
The Special Session of the Legislature was already over.
Bet it wouldn't be that quick now.
And the shocking murder trial resulting from the shooting of a woman in a car which would not dim its lights, at the hands of law enforcement, was set for September.
1924 Stan Hathaway born in Osceola, Nebraska. He was raised by an aunt and uncle in Hunley Wyoming after his mother died when he was two, and was the valedictorian of Huntley High School in 1941. He served in the Army Air Corps in World War Two, became a lawyer after the war, and was elected governor in 1967. He was briefly the Secretary of the Interior under President Gerald Ford.
1925 A collection of farm and ranch photographs was taken.
1964 The Swan Land and Cattle Company Headquarters was designated a National Historic Landmark. Attribution: On This Day.
2012 W. N. "Neil" McMurry, a giant in Wyoming's heavy construction industry for many years, and a significant figure in the oil and gas industry in his later years, died. His activities in these fields were particularly noticeable in Casper, where foundations related to his activities had a significant impact on the area.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
June 23
1845 Texas voted to accept annexation by the United States.
1916 The Casper Weekly Press for June 23, 1916
Some of the news of June 23, 1916, is freakishly familiar a century later.
1917 June 23, 1917. War news of all types
Cheyenne's papers, in contrast, were reporting that Russia would stay in the war. . . which of course it wouldn't. It would stay in a war, of course, one of its own horrific internal making.
And another headline gave a glimpse into the past, although it was a fairly recent past in 1917.
Friday, June 23, 1922. Confederate Veterans visit the White House, Chinese Prime Minister Wu Tingfang dies, A forgotten tragedy.
On this day in 1922, a group of Confederate veterans visited the White House.
An annual reunion was ongoing in Richmond, and this event was likely associated with it.
Chinese Prime Minister Wu Tingfang, in office for mere days, and part of an effort to consolidate the reunification of China, died of pneumonia.
A forgotten tragedy was reported on in Casper.
He was apparently keeping time with other women, maybe. She was upset, but wanted to reconcile, and then, the note stated, didn't want to live alone.
Earlier this week, we noted this:
Thursday, June 21, 1923. Dawn of the advertising age. Somewhere West Of Laramie.
The advertisement is the most famous car ad of all time, and the ad itself revolutionized advertising. Based on the recollection of the Jordan Motor Car Company's founder in seeing a striking mounted girl outside of Laramie, while he was traveling by train, the advertisement is all image, revealing next to nothing about the actual product. While the Jordan Motor Car Company did not survive the Great Depression, the revolution in advertising was permanent.
On this date, the advertisement actually ran. I've always thought that it ran in the form set out above, but there were multiple versions, and it would appear that in actuality, the version below is the one that ran.
It's similiar.
But I like the one set out at the very top better.
Sculptor Guzon Borglum began carving the Stone Mountain Memorial bas-relief. He'd work on the Confederate memorial until 1925, and then abandon the project, blasting his carving of Robert E. Lee off the mountain. None of his work at Stone Mountain remains.
1925 Lower Slide Lake forms near Kelly as a result of a massive landslide. Attribution: On This Day.
1943 A clothing drive for Russians began in Cheyenne. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.